I’m A Guest Editor At Coudal Partners

I’m honored to be a guest editor over at Coudal Partners for the month of November. Look for random design links and other fun stuff in their Fresh Signals feed from me and the rest of the team at Coudal.

So, What Is Coudal?
Coudal is an imposibly tough place to describe, but I’ll give it a try anyway. Coudal is a creative company based in Chicago that makes useful, well designed products and funshort films. They host and curate the always entertaining Layer Tennis, and the founder Jim gives great talks on how the company continues to make a living for designers by doing fun, creative projects and trying random ideas. They also created a non-crappy ad network that allows smart guys like John Gruber, Merlin Mann, Dan Benjamin, and dozens of other artists to do continue what they love doing without worrying about stuffing their site with ugly ads.

Trying Ideas for Fun And Profit
Coudal has always been my ideal example of a group of designers having fun, exploring different things they love to do, and making a living doing it. Their ad network even allows other artists to do the same. It’s exactly the kind of thing that I have tried to structure my career around and to talk to young designers about. Through Coudal, I saw that It was possible to make a living by trying all the random, disparate things I love to do. They seem to take their silly ideas and actually try them instead of just talking about them. Some ideas succeed, and some fail spectacularly. But, that really isn’t the point. To have the opportunity to try something else fun the next day is what they were all about. I love that about Coudal and am happy to be a small part of it.

Hi, Nick.
the shortcut to “great talks” is taking me to their page but I’m getting a Red JRE Exploit with Kaspersky. Do you have a way of letting them know, don’t think it’s a false +ve. Congrats on the gig though…respect!